Wayland residents take special tour of Chinatown

Sunday

Jun 24, 2012 at 12:01 AMJun 24, 2012 at 1:08 AM

On a sunny Saturday morning in June, Jenny Hotchkiss picked up the dim sum card at the Hei La Moon Restaurant in Chinatown and quietly translated the characters. At only nine years old, she has already been studying Chinese for three years.

Connie Burgess

On a sunny Saturday morning in June, Jenny Hotchkiss picked up the dim sum card at the Hei La Moon Restaurant in Chinatown and quietly translated the characters. At only nine years old, she has already been studying Chinese for three years.

“Most people think it’s really hard to learn but it’s been fun,” the Claypit Hill School third-grader said of her after-school studies in the Chinese language and culture classes in Wayland’s kindergarten and elementary schools.

The program offered through Wayland School Community Programs (WSCP) and overseen by Coco Min Zhou of Wayland will mark its seven years in Wayland’s schools next fall with the debut of a new evening class for adults at the town’s new High School.

Simultaneously, the Wayland Public Schools will – for the first time – offer Mandarin to seventh-grade pupils at Wayland Middle School, and the High School will begin an exchange program with students from China.

Coco Min Zhou believes the increased interest in Chinese language and culture in Wayland reflects growth in the number of Chinese residents.

“I think there is a steady increase in the number of Chinese families moving to our community. They’re coming here because of the excellent school system and the convenient location.”

In addition, she said, other residents have expressed interest in learning Chinese and understanding more about Chinese culture.

“Some may want this knowledge to help in business practices and others want to help their children learn the language,” she said. “Our superintendent, Dr. Paul Stein, and WSCP Director Brian Jones are helping us bring this new class for adults to Wayland.”

Over the past seven years, Coco Min Zhou says parents have given the program high marks, and she is quick to credit her teachers. “They are dedicated, caring and very talented,” she said.

Like other children in the classes, Hotchkiss likes the challenge of studying Chinese.

“I’m learning a language that not many people know, and that’s fun,” she said. “We play a lot of games to help us learn the characters, and we get rewards. I can read a lot of numbers and characters, but there are thousands of characters.”

The Zhang family of Wayland, whose first-grade son Aaron is enrolled at Happy Hollow School’s classes, enjoys the flexibility of having a school day rather than a weekend class.

Aaron is enrolled in a class for children whose families speak Chinese at home, which employs the Ma Li Ping curriculum. Classes for children whose primary language is English are also offered.

Haowei Zhang, Aaron’s father, notes that Aaron used to attend Chinese language classes in Newton on the weekends.

“We’re very happy to have the classes in Aaron’s school,” he said, while enjoying dim sum in Chinatown with a group of families whose children attend the Wayland classes. “Aaron’s teacher, Ms. Zheng, is the same one he had in Newton. What we like about Coco’s program is that it’s not just about learning the language. She brings the cultural part into it, and the children enjoy that a lot.”

Building on the emphasis on Chinese culture, Coco Min Zhou organizes a Chinatown tour at the end of each academic year. The trip to Chinatown on June 9 drew a large group of teachers, students, siblings, parents and grandparents.

Meeting at the Chinatown gate at 10:30 a.m., the group proceeded to the Hei La Moon Restaurant on Beach Street for a dim sum brunch.

Then they broke into three groups led by Coco Min Zhou and two teachers, Ms. Nan Li and Ms. Chaohang Zou, for a tour and informative scavenger hunt that would draw them into the history, culture and traditions of the Chinatown community.

Interesting points along the way included signage for the “Wong Family Benevolent Association,” which Min Zhou’s husband David Wong belongs to.

Min Zhou explained, “Historically, these organizations help people who come from the same villages in China. They help newcomers with jobs, family issues and business matters.”

Further along on the tour, the group stopped on Oxford Street, or Ping An Street.

“It was here,” Min Zhou said, “that the first settlers came in 1870 and lived in tents on this street. They had jobs in North Adams in a shoe factory, and there was a train station near here, which transported the workers to North Adams for the work week.”

In a medicinal herb shop, workers were preparing prescriptions provided by Chinese medicine doctors. Dried herbs, ginseng and tree bark are boiled and used to make medicinal soups like chicken soup with ginseng, which Min Zhou said is believed to boost the immune system.

Yet another small storefront sold and prepared “live chickens” for customers.

In designing the tour, Min Zhou chose sites that illustrate the variety of businesses that populate Chinatown’s busy streets and serve its residents, most of whom live in nearby apartments over commercial businesses or in the high-rise buildings hugging the entrance to the Mass. Pike.

Chinese culture and traditions are reflected in the items for sale. As an example, Min Zhou directs her group to an electronics store, “one of the many kinds of businesses in Chinatown.”

Adjacent to the offices of the World Journal Boston Edition of the Chinese Daily News is a bookstore with a wide selection of Chinese magazines, books and newspapers.

The tour’s final stop was the C Mart 2 Supermarket on Lincoln Street, a large store offering a wide array of fresh vegetables, fruits, meats and fish.

Apricots, mangoes, peapods, long squash, kohlrabi and bok choy filled the displays, along with rows of dried fish and mackerel imported from Hong Kong.

In the seafood area, live eels, tilapia and rock crabs were housed in large tanks, ready for customers.

With the tour finished, the group dispersed and headed toward the Chinatown Gate past the bamboo garden at the edge of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Its Zen waterfalls and feng shui designs lend a calm mood to this busy city neighborhood.

At small tables just outside the gate, elderly residents played Chinese chess while others sat under umbrellas at tables in the shadow of the gate.

And as they headed through the historic gate with its foo lions on each side, even adults from Wayland began to ponder if they – like young Jenny Hotchkiss – might learn to decipher those mysterious and historic characters.

For more information call 508-650-4884 or send an email (cocomzhou@yahoo.com). Information about the adult class will be available this summer. Enrollment forms for fall K-5 classes are online (www.wayland.k12.ma.us/district_info/wayland_school_community_programs/global_languages).